Join the line at near.mintbase.io

I last wrote about NFTs in this article Advertising’s New Tech Toy: NFTs sometime in early December 2020. A lot has happened since then. NFTs have literally blown up and hit mainstream with corporate brands such as Taco Bell and The New York Times minting NFTs alongside big-name artists such as Grimes, Aphex Twin and Richie Hawtin.

The problem with such massive, overnight demand is that the Ethereum network is again exposed to be groaning under the bloat. ‘Insane’ and ‘astronomical’ are just some of the adjectives used to describe the currently congested gas fees…

In the land of digital currencies, Bitcoin is King.

While chewing on the nature of cryptocurrencies and how it is currently eating up the world, I often think back to one of my favorite movies — Ari Folman’s The Congress. In a pivotal scene, the lead actress role played by Robin Wright arrives at a one-way checkpoint, drinks an ampoule and morphs into her animated form while leaving the real world behind.

When I first fell into the cryptocurrency rabbit hole, coins appeared much in the same way to me: colourful, animated money with virtual, elastic properties obeying its own…

The ad world is often regarded as an early adopter of tech. Global brands wanting to be seen as innovative and ahead of the curve are quick to jump on the latest, shiniest tech. From Augmented Reality to Instagram filters and curated experiential experiences, brands and their advertising agencies constantly have their radars out for the next big trend that could generate buzz, go viral, create hype and capture attention-deficit eyeballs.

All this effort works towards building up precious brand equity for companies — the reason why consumers will pay multiple times per dollar compared to a similar but no-brand…

Another fan echo.

Since my last post on Bitcoin in late September, the price has gone up by a bonkering 40–50%. That’s right.

If you somehow took my article as a buy-signal, and bought say $200, you would have made close to a cool $100. Now, I am not a financial advisor, but this lucky strike has got me feeling highly smug indeed.

Enough to talk more about it to anyone who’s listening.

I hope you own some Bitcoin, but I also don’t want to be held responsible for your personal financial decisions is what I am saying.

So let…

Better to be wrong than boring.

As humans, we often berate ourselves over our mistakes and failures in life. A broken glass. A lost ticket. A missed opportunity. Collectively, we are on a never-ending quest for perfection, where any sign of human error is to be tweezed out, eliminated and stamped out into oblivion.

But to err is human. And in this current reign of technology, to continually err in every possible way is our only hope for resistance.

The future is already written on the wall. There is only one direction that the technology ramp is headed — up…

How it happens in 4 parts.

My brain processing power is being used up elsewhere, so here’s a more lighthearted article that still features a list, but on a more personal note. I have been living in Berlin for a little more than four years now and while I still hang onto my Asian and Singaporean identity, I can’t help but notice the ways in which I am slowly becoming Germanized. Obviously this is not a bad thing. …

And that could be a good thing.

Over the past few tumultuous months, the price of Bitcoin has failed to significantly breach the ceiling of $12,500 in USD, instead hovering above and teasing below the psychological level of $10,000. As of now, the price is $10,700, with no hint of further notable price movement for the coming week except of going sideways.

On the surface, it appears to be a bulls versus bears situation, with the market in stalemate. …

Many of us have contemplated leaving Facebook at one point or another. Whether because of their increasingly intrusive privacy terms or because of the more general ills of social media. Perhaps, you also just watched Netflix’s The Social Dilemma.

But many of us still hesitate to leave because of the perceived loss of benefits. Benefits such as connection, networking and free gossip.

While you contemplate on deleting your Facebook account, there are usually three pathways which you can take from here:

1. Relinquish all social media as part of a new disconnected lifestyle
2. Find a suitable Facebook alternative
3. Reduce reliance on…